


growing (in the landscape)

by darthdarcyy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben is a Nature Spirit, Double Penetration, Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, Green Man, Ivy - Freeform, Living Tattoos, Loss of Virginity, Porn with Feelings, Rey is a bad girl, Shapeshifter, Tentacle Dick, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Zoophilia, ambiguous time period, and vague ass plot idk, fairy tale, fey, nature spirits, slight bestiality in ch 3, some mention of cruelty to children, some mention of starvation, vine porn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:47:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24415366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthdarcyy/pseuds/darthdarcyy
Summary: “Haven’t you heard, little mortal, that good girls don’t wander the wood at night?”A grin tugs at Rey's lips. “Well my lord, I’ve never been much of a good girl.”
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 27
Kudos: 142





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all!!
> 
> I've made some changes to this fic and I am BACK TO POST IT AGAIN!!!! HAHAHAHA. No smut until the third chapter, but it's rated explicit from the start just in case. If you have any issues with double penetration, nature dicks, tentacles, etc I'd leave now :D Otherwise, onward into weird territories!! 
> 
> If anything triggers you and is not labelled appropriately, PLEASE tell me and I will tag it! Ty!! <3
> 
> I marked Rey as underage because she's 17 in this. JSYK.
> 
> Also many MANY thanks to [thewayofthetrashcompactor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BriarLily/pseuds/thewayofthetrashcompactor) for betaing this fic and not thinking it was trash. <3 <3 ty ty!!! and for our monster groupchat on twitter for reading my ramblings about fern dicks. TY <3
> 
> Title comes from Florence Welch's song Landscape. FATM is clearly what I listened to while writing this :D

__

_Because I am unloved_  
_I went as far as I could get_  
_And the cedars like spires_  
_Wasting my goddamn time_

Florence and the Machine, _As Far as I Could Get  
_

The night Rey decides to walk, the moon is a smiling, shivering crescent in the sky, gazing down at her through her dirty window. She rolls over in her thin blankets and furs, shivering with the cold that never seems to leave her tiny, rickety hut. Something keeps drawing her gaze to the window, to the shadows across the moon and the stars shivering like cold naked girls in the dark sky. It is a restless night, a night of snow and wolves howling in the distance, a night for a walk in the woods, or at least through the lesser used paths in the village, where no one could glance through their windows and see her standing on the cobblestones like a shadow. The magic of the moaning wind, the whistling branches and shifting leaves is compelling, unquestionable.

Rey sits up abruptly, her back creaking from hours of lying on packed floorboards in the dark. She glances across the room at Old Fran snoozing in her nest of furs and hay in the corner, making sure the shrewd old woman isn’t just as awake as she is before she pushes herself up on hands made stiff from cold and rises from her little makeshift bed. Without the comfort of the blankets, Rey is left shuddering in the chill. She dresses quickly, tying her stays in sudden, rapid motions. She throws on every layer of clothing she possesses, jumpers made of thick wool and stockings of fleece before she bends swiftly down to tie the laces of her cracked leather boots.

It feels as though her skin is crawling with the danger, the excitement of the night, as though every part of her is craving escape.

When she is finally covered from neck to foot in layers of cloth, she snatches up the cloak Old Fran wove for her when she started really growing, when her twig legs took on definition and shape and her burgeoning breasts felt more like burdens than body parts, and throws it over her shoulders. It is a beautiful thing, all thick, spun wool the deep crimson, like the flush of skin under firelight or new blood. Rey feels instantly three times warmer as she closes the brass clasp at her neck and raises the hood over tucked up hair the color of chestnuts.

 _Now,_ she thinks, her grin sharp like the glint of light upon a knife. She snatches up the truffle basket sitting at the foot of her tiny bed and moves swiftly to the cupboard set tight against the wall beneath the window. After slowly opening the small, curved doors, back taught in case of creaks or sharp noises, Rey reaches her hands inside and pulls out two loaves of bread and a bowl of apples. She stuffs both in the basket, and reaches back in for a package of dried, salted meat before she shuts the doors and rises, her basket tucked tight to her breast, feeling a bit like a thief.

 _Don’t you go wandering off tonight_ , Old Fran’s familiar rumbling tones whisper across her memory. She uttered those instructions just hours before sundown. The old woman knows better than anyone the restless, wild movements of Rey’s mind. That she rarely, if ever, sleeps a full night because watching the moon wane, the sky drift from slate to indigo to rose is so much more like magic.

Rey is determined, despite the legends Old Fran spun for years of evil girls disappearing in the darkened woods, of the creatures lurking there ready to lure them from the path. _Good girls don’t go wandering off into the forest_ , she’d intone over her clicking needles _. Good girls stay home, with the sheep and the spinning. It’s the bad ones who look for the elves between the leaves, who disappear into the trees and never come back._

The last disappearance from her village took place long before she was born and she doubts that it was at the hand of a monster. She knows there are no dangers in the woods, just the moonlit dappled forest floor and perhaps the occasional swift descent of a hill. It is ridiculous really, being afraid of something so beautiful. Rey cannot resist her forest explorations, whether with her own feet or in her dreams.

So she holds her basket more firmly on her hip and unlatches the door, letting it slide gently open on the cold breeze so she can slip out and shut it tightly behind her, facing the world dark as a raven’s wing but as promising as a beginning.

She does not see the figure stir from its furs, sitting up to watch her, as the door swings softly shut.

**

Rey does not remember a time she didn’t travel to and through this forest, gazing up at its friendly canopy of dark overhanging branches or listening to the trilling song of ravens, squirrels, and foxes. It is as familiar as any hut in the village to the children who have parents, who are not chased off for being strange. The daughter of dead drunks, who slept in a sheep shed for six years until Old Fran took her in. Strange, she thinks, snorting, trailing her pale fingers over the wind-roughened bark of the nearest pine. The word is as familiar to her as these woods, but not nearly as loved. In fact, strange is a word Rey has come to loath as much as pity, and more than fear.

In fact, she thinks, pulling the thick material of her cloak tighter about her frail shoulders and ducking beneath branches, climbing clumsily over fallen logs in her skirts, basket bouncing a steady staccato against her hip, there has not been a time she did not know fear just as well, if not better, than the trees and moonlight. She sighs as she moves further between them, their foggy, dappled world that reminds her strangely of the few times she has been underwater in the summer, when the world was bright with patches of gold sunlight and she remembers running full out to the lake bordering the south side of the village, kicking off her slippers and cloak, feeling sweat-soaked and feverish, but free.

At first, she had plunged into the lake’s depths, not swimming (she did not know how), not moving, just twisting slightly so she was not facing the dirty floor snaked with roots and interrupted here and there by the dull flash of a minnow’s fin. Then, then something wonderful happened. She was suddenly staring up at the cloudless blue sky through what seemed like a veil, a curtain. She remembers feeling so apart from everything else, from the days of dull drudgery and loneliness. From the crowds of neighbors who never understood her, who never looked at her with anything but annoyance and sometimes horror etched in the hard lines of their faces, in their straightened shoulders and pursed mouths.

The forest at night reminds her of that moment, when she lay beneath the water like a stranger from another world. When she seemed to own all of the sky on the other side of that wet veil, as if all she had to do was reach out and pluck it and it would be hers. She feels that way here, as if she could stay forever amongst the trees and be their queen.

Rey walks slowly at first, enchanted by the soft music of the nighttime animals and trickles of frigid wind caressing pine needles. She raises her arms high, on either side of her so she can touch something, anything as she walks, cloak sifting over brambles like a long piece of silk. She craves the touch she so seldom receives back home, where even Old Fran seems to be afraid to hold her, afraid that the curse of drunkenness, of debauchery, of parents who died but were never found, will somehow crawl into her like a virus.

 _Doesn’t she know?_ Rey asks herself, hopping up to smack her hand against the flat side of a high branch as she moves beneath it. The syrupy sweet smell of resin fills her senses.

_There is no such thing as curses._

**

What at first appears to be a short walk through the outskirts of the wood becomes what could be described more aptly as an excursion. Rey weaves through tall pine trees bathed in shadow, climbs steadily over their outstretched roots and crunches her way through miniature hills of their needles for what seems like hours on end. It is as if she somehow finally knows peace as she kicks up clouds of dusty soil, grasps trees around their sticky middles and swings herself ‘round them in a dance. She even dares to break the deep seated silence of the night by letting out wild shrieking cries and dashing up hills and down slopes at top speed, icy wind catching in her throat, making her laugh and choke at the same time.

She can be free here, she knows. Nothing judges her; nothing looks at her with cruel, narrowed eyes. The squirrels and chipmunks, rabbits and badgers are all busy with their own little families, snuffling along the forest floor in search of food and warmth and shelter, not noticing the human invading their space. She is a part of something here that she never knew at home. It’s an old something, and Rey feels it burrow down into the marrow of her bones.

It’s something almost like belonging.

Everything seems to be alive under the shifting, curving light of the grinning moon, filling her with excitement. All of her previous evening outings seem dull and gray in comparison as she hoots back and forth with an owl, chases the shadows of the chipmunks among the roots. There is a tight space in her chest as she stops and looks about, gazes up at the ceiling of twisting, gnarled branches overhead, blocking out the full force of the moon’s light. She feels almost close to tears, joy tugging at her insides like an insistent hand.

Rey stays in the forest. She ignores all the warnings she has ever received from Old Fran, from eavesdropping on neighbors and the village priest. Nothing is more important than dashing, frolicking, dancing and laughing through the woods to her heart’s most desperate desire.

**

It is almost morning and the moon is slowly starting to wane, the ultramarine sky shifting to the soft color of cornflower blossoms when she realizes she has wandered past the outskirts she always restricted herself to in previous outings, ignoring the little map she drew in her mind as a child.

The trees here are much taller, much thicker and the deep shadows that surround their trunks are darker somehow, stranger and more foreign. They no longer sprout from the ground in straight lines like match sticks, but everywhere at once, clustering here, bare there, wild and overgrown. Fallen trees interrupt the skyline ahead, covered in moonlit moss and speckled with mushrooms. A single blackbird, hopping along the surface of a log obscuring Rey’s path undoubtedly searching for worms, leaps into flight when she stops, gasping, just two paces from it.

She has never seen a bird like that before, small and black and beady. The ones near her village are as brown and homey as their nests, and when they are not brown, they are inky black ravens with sharp, intelligent eyes. But that bird, that tiny bird with the jerky hop is neither raven nor brown bird, and for the first time, Rey is afraid.

**

Rey’s fear grows around midmorning, after all attempts to turn back toward the village are thwarted by the thickening trees. She wonders what drew her out into the night, what feeling made her wander farther and farther from home. Her little hut and the pile of warm furs by the fire are distant memories. All she has left are her basket, her cloak, and the whole of the forest before her.

What happened, in the span of hours between moonlight and sun? Did the forest decide she no longer belonged?

As buttery sunlight begins to creep across the ground about her feet, Rey sinks to the base of an oak tree, its trunk as thick as two men. She balances her basket on shaking knees and opens it, feeling the first prick of tears behind her eyes. It is a helpless feeling, being catapulted into a moment without knowledge or consent. Rey is utterly alone, without friends or even much food. Not that she had an abundance of either before. She gazes down into her fleece-lined basket, the little bowl of fruit, the loaf of bread, the small skin of water. Only enough for a day maybe, or two if she’s lucky. She wonders if she might starve.

Hunger is an old friend of hers, though it had become a distant one since Old Fran took her in.

It is in that moment, as small and insignificant as a drop of water in a vast rain shower, that she decides she will not let one simple mistake snap her spirit. That she will walk on until she finds whatever is waiting for her, whatever took her from her bed and led her out into the night.

Finally, she chooses an apple from her basket, its skin as crimson as autumn leaves, as bright as blood. She takes a lustful, harsh bite, and the sweetness of the juices running down her chin makes her smile.

Morning bleeds slowly into afternoon and the sun rises like a monarch across the sky, threading the overhanging branches with hazy yellow light. Rey, indigo hood still pulled up over her now tangled and half-tucked hair, wanders ever further into the forest. Here and there the sun shines on small pools of effervescent grey water, on the crimson wings of strange pointed birds, the flickering tails of squirrels black as soot. There are wonders here, Rey realizes, pushing aside sharp brambles as she goes, that she would never have known if she had not left her village. That is comfort enough, she supposes.

Or hopes.

She wanders for hours, deep into the strong afternoon sunlight that has sweat trickling down her spine, sometimes changing direction depending on where the undergrowth is thickest or where she can feel the forest floor sweeping gradually downward or upward. Time passes differently here, almost achingly slowly, like the creaking movements of old bones. The new trees, tall and thick and dark with something like menace, seem to close in on her, muffling the sounds of her booted feet, the swish of her cloak, the creak of her basket.

Soon Rey finds herself climbing steadily upwards, the trees growing at a tilt up a steep incline. She hopes, clutching her basket, that the hill will not end in some sort of cavernous drop to her death. She steadies herself on thick overhanging branches as she moves, now panting heavily, the thin strips of sunlight moving through the trees pointing directly at her face and the heavy cloth covering her arms.

She climbs and climbs, sometimes pushing herself upward with her hands on the packed earth, crawling and scuttling like a spider. The hillside gradually evens out, the trees are thinner here, and in the distance she can see an interruption between them, a steep decline.

“Does it ever end?” she pants to herself, gazing around at the midsections of the trees (she can’t even begin to see the tops of them, even if she lays back across the rough grass and pine needles and squints just so. This must be the older section of the forest, with trees this tall) as if waiting for them to answer. Shrugging to herself, she plows onward through the brambles, pausing every now and again to leap upward and smack her palm decisively against a branch inches over her head. Although the quiet still covers the trees in this portion of the forest like a down blanket, she can hear muffled noises in the distance, the scuttling of small feet across bark, the rattling of leaves and a strange clopping sound somewhere up ahead.

As Rey moves closer to the odd _clip clop, clip clop_ , it is joined by another even stranger sound, the jingling of bells. It cuts eerily through the gloom of the hugging trees, tinkling in the exact way Rey imagines starlight would, if it fled to earth. Startled, intrigued, she walks faster, her basket beating almost painfully against her thigh and upper arm. Something pushes her deeper into the brambles, some strange feeling of connectedness, of excitement. A flush floods her cheeks; a grin cuts her lips, sharp and gasping. Could those bells; those lovely bells mean someone is out there? Someone she can talk to, someone who wouldn’t see the curse of her past? Maybe...someone just as lonely as she is?

She presses forward blindly, hands scraping against bark sticky with sap, feet tripping over roots and tangled leaves. Excitement is like a roiling fire deep in her stomach, making her insides burn.

Finally, she reaches a break in the trees and stumbles to a halt, her breath coming in tight little gasps. She is standing at the top of a short but swift decline, her feet dislodging loose bits of pebbles and earth that dance lightly down the hillside. At the bottom of this hill is a pathway, cool and shady beneath another copse of trees, as if someone had run a plow straight through the middle of the forest. The pathway is of rough dirt, no different than the forest floor except for a suspicious lack of needles and the presence of thin bits of curling mist sparkling along the tops of the soil.

And somewhere in the distance is that strange, haunting melody, _clip clop jingle, clip clop jingle_. It is multiplied this time, as if two or three or even four pairs of bells are hopping delightfully down the path. Rey collapses against the rough and sticky front of a pine, sliding down with a bump to sit on the packed dirt. Her breath is burning her throat, and her legs ache from continuous movement. She grasps in her basket for the skin of water, desperate for something to cool the fire, and waits eagerly as the sound grows louder, coming ever closer.

A horse as tall as a house from her village proper and as pale as ice breaks through the curling tendrils of mist. It stomps, snorting, hooves pounding the ground like drumbeats. Hands covered in supple dark leather pull on its reins and the horse ceases all movement, smooth head bending in submission. The beast is massive, wide as a wagon and just as strong. Its velvet white coat emits a strange soft haze, like the glow of candles across wood, and a handful of merrily tinkling bells hang from its reins.

Rey’s eyes shift from the silver bells woven into the horse’s reins to its rider. And suddenly, she can see just why the creature is so huge. The man sitting astride it has to be over a head taller than Rey, who isn’t in the least small for a woman.

Where the horse is pale, its master is dark as shadow. Long, muscular legs encased in black leather and thick, dark boots cling to the beast’s flanks, unheeded by stirrups. What Rey can see of his broad chest is covered in a heavy brocaded leather breastplate with an intricate pattern of curling ivy across its center. The ivy, burnt into the leather, continues across the rider’s arms, stitched into his tunic sleeves in pale thread, stretching up towards his shoulders and down to the tight gloves encircling his fingertips. His neck, long and muscled, is bare of armor and hair the color of dappled shadow lies curled across it, shifting softly along his powerful shoulders in the light breeze.

He would be a beautiful man, heartbreakingly handsome, if not for his cold expression. His lips are full and curved downward in a deep scowl, but pink and plush. Rey’s heart twists as she looks at them, her tongue darting out to lick the corners of her own much smaller mouth. She’s never seen a man like this, with his sharp cheeks dotted with freckled moles and lips soft as sin. 

His eyes though...they’re not brown or green, but an actual black, like a raven’s wing. They seem to cut through the forest gloom like the edge of a straight razor. There is something strange about that color; it seems to give off its own sheen like obsidian. Something like fear ripples down Rey’s spine, tussles with the odd tendrils of desire coiling in her gut.

The man raises one gloved hand to his lips and lets out a shrill whistle like birdsong. There is a sudden thundering along the path, dust shifts, and through the mist more horses can be seen, at least a dozen of them. Chestnut mares, stallions with coats black as midnight and eyes like ink and one poor beast with a pattern of roses and curving thorns shaved into its hide. The men sitting astride these animals are just as dark, just as stern as their leader. Some are dark haired like he is, some light, but they all have that strange, sharp face and perpetual frown.

Each man is also carrying some sort of weapon, a massive cleaving axe, a beautifully carved bow, a longsword. And as the mist shifts and the afternoon sunlight finally makes its way through the thick, overhanging branches to caress their faces and leather clad shoulders with light, Rey notices something different, something that sends more than mere fear running down her spine.

It is their eyes, and not just their odd, glowing properties, but the color itself. Some of the men have eyes like birds, deep opaque black and others have eyes like cats, glowing dark yellow. But one of the men, with hair thick as brush, has eyes glowing red like the last embers from a fire.

And for the first time since realizing she has no way home, Rey is well and truly terrified. It is the terror of a hunted thing upon discovery of a predator. The arresting music of the bells no longer holds sway over her. She begins to move, quietly and low to the ground, her heart beating a swift and unpleasant tattoo against her breast. Something tells her she does not want these men, with their animal eyes and weapons made for hurting, to notice her. Any hope for companionship, for someone to see her, to know her, is gone. She knows now that she must get away.

She moves down the hillside, trying to keep her footsteps as light as possible in the shifting needles, clutching her basket to her breast like a friend. Once she reaches the bottom of the hill, she sets off at a run, moving between the trees, letting the harsh wind catch her tears and brushing them off as the effects of the cold.

She runs for a long time, minutes pass like fleeting heartbeats as she tries to put as much space between herself and that strange pathway as possible. She raises her hands over her head, panting, her basket sliding down her upper arm, to protect her face from sharp branches as they grasp at pieces of her hair like clawed fingers. She runs clumsily into new sections of forest, and through the blinding haze of her tears and the arms flung haphazardly over her head, she does not notice how much darker the trees around her have become, how the shadows are deeper here, the ground less stable.

At first, the steady downward sloping of the ground is not noticeable, but as her feet pick up speed, it becomes impossible to control the movements of her legs. Rey lowers her arms in surprise as her feet slip out beneath her and she goes tumbling down a steep and dark hillside, hitting every outstretched root and jutting rock painfully. She clings to her basket, to the heavy material of her cloak and presses her hands to her face to protect her eyes from the rising dust as she plummets helplessly down through leaves and dirt.

 _Am I going to die?_ she asks herself, the tears coming heavily now, streaking down her face and into her hair. It seems like the hill goes on forever, and she wonders if it ends in a cliff side or the shore of a lake. She could throw out an arm to a jutting boulder or catch a root on her skidding and painful way past to stop her descent for at least a moment, but something keeps her from trying, something that weighs on her chest like despair. She does not know where she is and there are no friends in this forest to aid her, so why continue like this? She has never had companions, and she feels she will never know the comfort they provide. She wishes, desperately, so desperately it sears her heart like the touch of flame against flesh, that she could know peace, and know it further than the fleeting moments of watching stars appear through tree branches. She wants to know it completely, to have someone place it before her like a feast. It seems to her, as she rolls down that hill (it could be almost comical if she didn’t feel so close to death), that this forest freed her, but did not give her the comfort she craved, the love, companionship and acceptance. She wonders if she will ever find them, or if she will continue wandering between the trees like a ghost.

Or if the hill will end in a precipice that she'll find herself tumbling off.

As the hopelessness of her descent begins to seem unending, it suddenly stops. Her whole body slams heavily into something solid, filling her ribs and thighs with sharp pain. Groaning softly, Rey attempts to sit up but her numb palms skid on the slippery needles and silt and she falls backward again, hitting her head on a small rock hidden in the undergrowth. Cursing her dumb luck, she throws out her arms and clutching handfuls of roots and dirt, slowly, achingly pulling herself into a semi-seated position.

Looking up, she sees the distinct curves of a roof over her head, and just below it, a small window. A house, she thinks, grinning. Her lips, chapped and dry, stretch painfully and she winces. She performs a very quick examination of her injuries as she sits propped up against the house. Swollen ankle, bruised knees…well, bruises everywhere really, a rather sore elbow, cuts and various scrapes along her arms, a deep abrasion in her scalp, blood clinging in sticky clumps to her hair. She sighs, wishing she had paid attention when Old Fran tried to teach her about healing balms and choosing the correct leaves of forest plants.

Standing is a harsh struggle, but she finally manages to pull herself up into a half crouching position by clutching the sharp wooden edge of the house and heaving with all her strength. The little shack is too small to belong to the men down the pathway, they seem to be creatures of vast cold halls, and once she limps to the window and squints through the gap between pale curtains, she sees that the place has only one room, just like the little house she shared with Old Fran in her village.

Rey creeps painfully along the edge of the house, keeping to the bushes that grow tall about its walls. As she moves, she hears soft, guttural music, as if someone with a deep voice is singing to themselves. She reaches the very edge of the bushes and sees a hunched little figure sitting on the little wooden porch leading to the front door of the shack, shelling peas into a bucket by their feet, humming a soft, carrying melody. A black cat with long bandy legs lies curled against the figure’s side, head on its knee. The person is so covered in cloth, varying from white to brown to deep blue, that it is impossible to tell if it has a gender. Perhaps it doesn’t. 

As Rey moves to step backward, to wonder if she should approach the figure, or if it would somehow sprout wings or claws or eyes like flame, a voice that sounds oddly like the croaking of toad calls, “You’d better come out, dearie. I could hear you from a mile away, ankle like that.”

Shivering with anticipation, wondering if this could be what she is looking for or perhaps what she ran from along the path, Rey steps from the shelter of the bushes and into the soft sunlight.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess which unfortunate scourge of a human upped the chapter count?? SO SORRY there will be more smut starting in the third chap i promiseeeeeeeeee but it just got away with me! and of course rey and kylo can't talk in the first few chapters OF ANYTHING I WRITE DEAR GOD.
> 
> thank you all SO SO MUCH for the kind words and kudos on the first chapter!!!
> 
> hope you are doing well in this just...crappy time, jeez. so many hugs and so much love <3
> 
> this chap is unbeta'd...lol we die like men

__

_I went as far as I could get_

_I went as far as I could get_

_I went as far as I could get_

_And I'm not far enough yet_

Florence & the Machine, _As Far As I Could Get_

The little house is...not so little on the inside. In fact, it’s rather spacious. Vast and round, as if it had been carved from the trunk of some great tree. The dirt floor is neatly swept, walls packed with wool insulation, with a short ceiling to keep the heat in. A tall besom smelling heavily of cedar takes up the space by the front door, showing exactly how the old woman keeps the space so clean, and above it, nailed to the wall and hanging crooked as if it had been jostled, is a carving of a face, all dark wood and smooth lines, whittled in long, continuous strokes of a knife.

Its open mouth is framed by a pointed beard. Above them both are a long, crooked nose and a pair of wrinkled little eyes under thick brows. Grinning eyes, leering eyes, and turned in her direction. Rey shivers. It’s a hunk of expertly carved wood, but the expression is almost too sharp, too alive. 

She turns from the thing in a hurry, still feeling its gaze on her back. 

_Hope the rest of this place isn’t as strange._

Bunches of dried herbs dangle from iron hooks attached to the ceiling, filling the space with pungent perfume. Rey recognizes some of them: lavender, for a dreamless sleep. Chamomile, for stomach pains. Catnip, to relieve the nose in spring. Others are more mysterious: tangles of indigo blooms, lengthy crimson stems with viridescent leaves. Some even look to Rey’s naked eye like simple brambles or weeds pulled from garden beds. They drift in the breeze from the open door, catching the hazy sunlight, their shadows the walls.

The walls themselves are framed by numerous cabinets and long wooden counters lined with glass bottles and jars of varying sizes and colors. Brown and green and indigo, filled with liquid, powders, crushed plants, pickled vegetables, and other strange things that glitter softly in the light streaming from the window.

Rey is mesmerized. She’s never seen so many strange things in one place, never smelled such a heady combination of scents: at once sweet and musky, floral and tangy, warm and bitter. It reminds her of the incense the old priest burned in the village church before vespers, how the air twined with smoke. It used to make her sneeze when she was a child, before she stopped attending. Before she stopped praying at all. 

She feels a nudge at her back and moves aside to let her companion enter, realizing suddenly that she’s loitering in the doorway. 

The old woman, hunched, her various layers of ragged clothing dragging a lean pathway through the dirt floor, bustles to a deep set fireplace in a far corner. No actual fire is lit, but a stack of neatly chopped wood is perched beside it, just waiting for the sun to disappear. She lifts a bottle full of ruby liquid from the mantle and holds it to the light, watching as it streams from one side of the glass to the other, glittering like an ember.

A sharp burst of pain shoots through Rey’s ankle as she watches the old woman, hypnotized by the cobra dance of the red liquid. Wincing, she lifts her ankle a few inches into the air and hops lightly in place, trying to keep her balance, hands scrabbling at the doorjamb. She almost falls out of the cottage, causing a slight tussle with the besom, and the old woman whips her head about, her eyes like quicksilver. There is something sharp and eerie about her face, Rey thinks. Under delicate folds of lacelike wrinkled skin, her bones are high and pointed, regal. A little shiver worms its way down Rey’s spine. Perhaps the woman has spent too many lonely years in the woods with nothing but herbs for company. That would make anyone hyper-vigilant of noises. It would certainly make anyone a little queer.

The woman sets the bottle down with a sharp clank and turns to Rey, moving surprisingly quickly until she is level with her elbow. She comes up to Rey’s collarbone, and this close, she can make out how deep set her crow’s feet are, how pointed her chin. 

Slipping a cool hand around Rey’s arm, her companion leads them to a polished, amber-colored wooden table set in the very center of the room, where she pulls out a hand-whittled chair with a creak and gestures for Rey to sit. The woman does not speak a word, but the look in her eye is almost calculating. She reminds Rey of Old Fran, of the way she used to peer up at her over her knitting, knowing exactly what she was thinking. Will she ever see Old Fran again? Eat her venison stew, listen to her grumbled songs?

 _No,_ Rey thinks, knows. Something, a feeling just beyond her reach, tells her her only path is forward, that she will never see her little village again.

She’s gone too far to go back now. For some reason, perhaps exhaustion, Rey finds she isn’t scared.

She collapses gratefully (and with little grace, the hand-whittled chair groans) into the little chair as her companion pulls up a seat beside her, using a three legged stool from under the table as a sort of stepping stone. She is so small that her legs dangle over the floor, filthy bare feet just brushing the packed dirt. Once settled, she jerks her head to the stool, and when Rey hesitates, impatiently wraps cold fingers like twigs around Rey’s calf, drawing her ankle up for examination. 

She turns Rey’s leg this way and that, leaning close enough that her nose nearly brushes Rey’s ankle. 

“Pardon me ma’am,” Rey begins, her voice raspy from disuse. “But what should I call you?”

“Don’t have much of a name out here,” comes the croaking reply.“You don’t need one in this place. But I was called Maz once. You can use that name if it comforts you, child.”

Rey mouths the name to herself as Maz focuses on her work, cold twiglike fingers prodding gently along her aching joints. She presses a bit too hard on the bone and Rey jumps in her seat. 

“Thank you,” she murmurs as she recovers from the jolt of pain. She lowers her eyes to her hands clasped in her lap, fingers crooked from too many clumsily set fractures, speckled with sewing scars. The nails are filthy and little cuts litter the backs of her palms. She rubs them lightly on the edge of her cloak, wincing as they sting from the contact with the wool. “Name’s Rey, if you feel the need.”

The woman…Maz, inclines her head. 

“You know,” she says, patting Rey’s calf and leaning back. Her voice is barely more than a mumble, but it sounds to Rey like the croaking call of a crow as it takes wing. It trickles down the back of her neck, a cold touch. She is strange, this little woman in the woods. 

She pierces Rey with that gaze again, shrewd and calculating, but this time her lips tip in a teasing smile, revealing a full set of crooked teeth tinged with moss. Rey tries not to grimace as the woman’s voice floods down her spine again, like a trickle of icy water.

“I’ve lived long enough to see the same eyes in different people.” Maz murmurs, and Rey’s gaze jerks up from her mouth to her own eyes, dark and deep set under a veil of wrinkled skin. Twinkling with something like mischief now. “I see your eyes. I know them.”

“You do?” Rey leans forward over the handle of her truffle basket and the two regard each other. She has always been an impulsive creature, her nighttime jaunt full proof, but she finds herself smiling conspiratorially, winking, whispering as she remembers running through the woods alive with delight and feeling, leaping to smack overhanging trees, listening to the song of their twigs and branches whispering in the breeze. Something tells her this old woman would know the feeling just as well. “Are you one of the Good Folk?”

Maz lets out such a loud, booming laugh that Rey nearly startles out of her seat. “Oh child!” she crows, guffawing, her crooked fingers clutching the pale robes bunched at her collarbone. “No. Gods above, no. I’m just an old woman, alone too long.” she smiles when their eyes meet, a quick curve of lips that reveals those stomach-turning mossy teeth again. In the buttery sunlight, Rey could swear they were sharp.

 _I’m tired_ , she thinks, staring at her companion’s pale mouth. _Too tired._

The tiny woman gives Rey’s calf one final pat and hops off the stool, still chortling as she bustles off across the floor, the edges of her skirts drifting in the dirt. There are little pathways here and there across it, Rey notices, smooth swathes of dirt left in her wake. 

“What do my eyes tell you?” she finds herself asking, as her companion stops at the window where fat jars and tall bottles of multi-colored crushed plants sit on the sill warming in the sunlight and begins examining them, bent close to the glass.

She doesn’t look up, still chuckling. “Are you sure you want the answer?"

 _I wouldn’t have asked otherwise,_ Rey thinks, affronted. “Of c-”

“Of course you do, child,” she interrupts, lifting jars over her head, squinting at the contents. Rey watches oil in one little bottle catch the sunlight drifting in from the round window, glittering like gold. Her arms come alive with gooseflesh. “Of course you do.” 

Maz’s fingers flick over a row of crooked bottles red as ripe radishes, nimbly choosing two without even jostling the glass, which join several jars in the curve of one skinny arm. She shuffles back to her seat, to Rey hanging on her every word, feeling as if this woman has peeled back a layer of skin and rubbed salt into it. It’s an unsettling feeling. 

Setting her bounty on the table, Maz lines them up across the edge by size and shape, eyes intent and squinted. Rey watches this odd little action, hypnotized by the uneven line of corked tops, the smells of the mysterious liquids and pastes as they are uncovered, one by one. 

When a particularly squat little jar is opened, it fills the room with such a pungent smell, like sweat and unwashed teeth, that Rey barely keeps from coughing. 

“Just the thing,” Maz murmurs, dipping crooked finger tips into the jar. They emerge covered in a sticky green paste and the scent washes over Rey again, making her gag. She looks down at her exposed ankle, her boot lying in the dirt beneath the stool, and back at the hand dripping with strong smelling salve. 

“That?” she asks. 

Maz levels her with a stern look, and it’s almost as if they’d met ages ago, rather than a few hours previous. 

“Do you want to feel better?”

“Yes-”

“Do you want this sprain healing poorly?”

“N-”

Maz plows right over her. “Of course you don’t. Now…”

Rey settles back in the spindly, hand-whittled little chair, defeated. It’s not like anyone’s out there to mock her for the smell or anything, she thinks. She’ll be alone once Maz lets her leave, unless she wants to cook her over the fireplace and this is just seasoning.

“As I was saying, yes,” Maz taps her temple with a blunt fingernail caked with garden soil and salve. “Losing the last bit of my mind out here, old age being what it is.”

Her cool fingers massage the oddly warm salve into Rey’s exposed ankle. It’s a bit gritty, and she can see bits of ground up herbs still combined with the oils and fats as they glisten in the afternoon light. It _is_ warm, warmer than the bit of sun Rey is sitting in, and it feels good rubbed into her skin, no matter how awful it smells. The last of the sharp pain gives way to numbness, and her shoulders gradually relax.

“Thank you,” Rey says. Maz snorts.

Instead of responding, the old woman looks up at her, and the look in her eyes is something Rey has never seen before in another’s face. Maz’s eyes are dark and radiant, her brows furrowed. She is looking at Rey with something like understanding etched into the lines of her face, as if she knows how it feels not to be known. 

“Dear child” she says, in a quiet, wistful murmur. “The belonging you seek is not behind you.” she smooths her cool palm over Rey’s skin, as the words sink in like nettle stings. How did she know? How did this old woman know that all of Rey’s life, since she was a lonely child crying for her father in an empty hut, that all she ever wanted was to belong? That a strange, tiny part of her wondered if she could find her father in the forest or her mother, living in the trees? 

Maz set the jar of salve down on the table and stood, her skirts rustling as she stepped around the stool to Rey’s side. She didn’t realize her eyes were full of tears until she felt the first trickle of warm liquid down her cheek.

“Oh child,” the old woman murmured, and arms thin as twigs wrap around Rey’s shoulders. Something caves in Rey then, something she’d packed up around her heart the same way Maz insulated her house’s walls, something to withstand her neighbors’ glares, Old Fran’s pity, the implications behind the near-constant inquiries of _Rey, were you a good girl?_ And the way her old guardian used to beg her, _Rey, please just be a good girl. Don’t go out tonight. Don’t miss church. Don’t muck up that hem._

_Be a good girl._

_Not like your mother._

_Be more like us._

She is crying quietly now, as quietly as she can with heaving shoulders, into the crook of Maz’s neck, a crook that smells like catnip and tea leaves, with a little bit of garden soil and sweat mixed in. 

Hands touch her hood, tugging it lightly back off of the crown of her head, and then Maz is touching her there, smoothing the snarls, stroking Rey’s tangled hair. No one’s done this for her in years, and even when she was a coltish child, Old Fran only patted her on the head, as if touching her for too long made her uncomfortable. 

Something tells Rey that Maz is used to discomfort. 

Rey cries for a long time, and it is an ugly sort of crying. The kind that leaves you with a headache and a snot-covered face. Her eyes ache when she finally feels the tears dry and she feels as rung out as a rag on washing day, but Maz holds her through it all. Her callused fingers smooth out the knots left at the ends of Rey’s hair, divesting her buns of their ties and the bits of forest fauna she’d picked up from her romp. 

Once Rey feels the shivers and sobs decline, the tears drying in salty tracks down her neck, Maz moves back just far enough to look her right in the eyes.

“That belonging?” she says, her eyes crow-bright and shining. She gives Rey’s shoulders a little shake, as if for emphasis. “It is ahead. You must believe.”

If Rey were not so tired, she would have collapsed again in sobs to hear that someone, a _stranger_ has this kind of faith in her.

Instead, she gives her companion a shaky smile, nods despite the part of herself screaming its rejections, and lets Maz bandage her ankle, feed her hunks of break with chopped carrot and parsnip fresh from the dirt that make her tongue tingle, and put her into the trundle bed in the corner for an afternoon nap.

It feels...almost like gluttony, letting another person take care of her.

**

She dreams of the man she saw along the path.

He stands beneath a veil of dark branches, one gloved hand reaching to pluck leaves from twigs and crush them between strong, agile fingers. Fingers connected to a hand that spans her entire skull, it seems. The forest is swathed in night, little rivers of moonlight illuminating shadows along the bushes and leaf piles, glowing along the roots of the infant trees. The man walks on, slowly, arms held out as if embracing the woods as his own.

Are they his? Does this land belong to him?

She is asleep in the darkened forest, she knows, back pressed to the rough bark of a towering pine, cloak held tight to her breast to keep out the cold night air. Something inside her, some cold fearful knowledge of the shadows tells her this man, this <i>creature</i> with eyes that move through the night like the glint of a lantern across cobble _will_ find her. He will find her and her life will not be the same. She should run, should find a place to hide, that’s what _good girls_ would do, but she is so exhausted, and she is so far away from her village now. Does she still have to worry about being a good girl?

The man walks ever on, ever closer to where she reclines, backed against the tree like a ragdoll, too tired to move. Whispers of moonlight fall across his inky curls, and suddenly, as if stepping through a curtain from another world, he stands before her, in the little circular copse of trees, his arms still outstretched like wings.

She sees him move to her figure from above, as if she is a bird perched in a nearby tree. He stands, huge in the little clearing, shoulders broad enough to block out the crescent moon. Behind him, stretched out far across the forest floor, is a strange, many-limbed shadow crowned with antlers like a deer’s, fully visible even with barely any moonlight. 

_A dream_ , Rey tells herself, quickly looking away. _This is a dream._ And as quickly as a snap of fingers, she is back in her own body at the base of that tree, her legs akimbo, her fingers resting on her abdomen. Her eyes are not open, but she can still see him as clearly as if they were.

He bends with a soft whisper of leather and cloth, staring at her with his own solemn, coal dark eyes. His plush lips twist, and this close, Rey can see a speckle of small beauty marks dotting his skin, the little wrinkles across the center of his bottom lip. His eyes are so black he barely has any visible pupils and there is a foreign emotion in them, something she can’t name that still makes her feel like her skin’s been peeled back, like she’s flayed open for him to examine and find wanting. 

Moments pass as he stares at her. Rey knows for absolute certain that this is a dream, because otherwise she would be fidgeting like a goat by now.

He licks his pale pink lips, a flick of tongue that sets her insides aflame, and reaches out a gloved hand to touch her face.

**

Rey wakes with a start in the little one-roomed house on the edge of the hill, a tiny stream of drool pooling at her chin, trickling down to the linens beneath her head. Flushing, she jerks upright in Maz’s bad, wiping the drool away with the back of her scuffed hand as a wool blanket tumbles from her chest to her lap. 

She is trembling, blushing and shivering with the strangely vivid memory of her dream, and her cheek feels hot to the touch. He had brushed her face, fingers so long and broad they reached the edge of her hairline; she still feels the ghost of them burning like the touch of ice in midwinter.

And her cheek isn’t the only part of her that burns: her nipples are pebbled beneath her winter layers.

Rubbing her arms to dispel the gooseflesh, she glances down at the blanket pooled in her lap to the strip of white cloth Maz had packed with herbs and oils wrapped around her ankle. The herbs, packed together with the salves and oils feel cool against her skin and she can smell their comforting earthy scent through the thick layers of cloth. 

Her hair feels sticky and wet, and she raises a hand to find that the wound she had most likely sustained from her tumble down the hill is gone. Only a bit of tacky blood remains, and oil that has her hair feeling thick and smooth. Sitting up straight, Rey runs her hands down her arms and across her legs, feeling no sting of cuts, no ache of bruises. The old woman must have cleaned her somehow as she slept, must know some of Old Fran’s craft, if not more.

Feeling embarrassed for having doubtless snored through the entire process, she looks up and sees the old woman sitting at the table, holding a wooden cup of something steaming to her withered mouth, regarding her with a little teasing smile. Another cup, round and smooth, sits by her elbow. She taps it, raising a thick brow in Rey’s direction. 

Rey takes a moment to fold the blanket she had been so kindly covered with and lay it at the end of the bed before moving back to the table. The sun no longer streams in through the windows behind them, and it feels to Rey, cotton-mouthed and fuzzy-headed as she is, that hours have passed. The house now smells of stew again, of potatoes and green things. 

She tucks herself into the whittled chair and taps her fingers on the table’s surface, probably smoothed by Maz’s own hand years ago. Her companion regards her carefully as she fidgets, taking little slurping sips of her tea.

“I-I-“ Rey stammers, and startled, raises her own cup to her lips. The liquid is achingly hot, it scalds her tongue and burns her throat, but it is sweet and smells like chamomile and wildflowers. She does not know what to say to this old woman to convey her gratitude, her embarrassment. She realizes she’s never had to apologize to a stranger or thank them before. She has never sat at another’s table, never partaken in their food, never been cared for as if she belonged with them, no questions asked. Old Fran had never been a stranger, she was all Rey knew. But she was never taken on her guardians rounds about the village, never invited over with her for tea or supper. 

Something cold twists in her stomach and she feels suddenly nauseous, the words coming like a hasty gulp of air. “I am so sorry…I did not realize-”

“Do not worry, child,” Maz says, setting down her cup and waving the apology away with one thin hand. Where Rey once saw nails caked with grime and crooked, knobby-knuckled fingers, she now sees hands that built her own house, tended her own food. Created a life for herself out of nothing, in the middle of nowhere. “You have walked a long way, and these herbs have that effect on a body.”

“The…herbs?” Rey does not think to ask how the woman knows of her journey.

“Oh yes, dear. You see those bundles by the door?” she gestures to the muted purple flowers that rey had vaguely recognized when she entered the house. “Lavender. For good slumber, you know. Pleasant dreams.”

Maz’s eyes crinkle at the corners.

The back of Rey’s neck prickles. Did those herbs bring on the dream, or was it over excitement perhaps, or fear?

“You know,” Maz continues, slowly moving her fingers across the rough surface of the table, drawing little circles with her nails. “You'll want to be careful child. Do you not know what walks these woods at night? You were quite lucky to find me before the sun set.”

“Find?” Rey interjects, taking one last hasty swallow of tea. “I fell into your house. Or _at_ your house, I’m not sure-”

Maz shrugs. “We all make discoveries in our own ways. Regardless, these woods teem with things you wouldn’t want to see at night. Dark elves, werewolves, tree spirits, kappas, shapeshifters. The Good Folk. Bears and wolves too, nights like these.”

Rey cannot help her skeptical laughter, choking a bit on the sweet herbal tea. This woman seems just as strange and perceptible to myths as the women in her own village, women who whisper <i>God is always watching, be a good child</i> like some strange prayer, who quickly usher their children into their houses as the sun falls, looking in fear towards the woods, towards the Good Folk they know are there, waiting to snatch them away. 

Ridiculous, Rey thinks, to fear the trees and the loneliness so. To fear the night. She’s seen her own share of oddities in just the last few hours, but she cannot bring herself to fear the woods. After all, she’s always been alone in the dark.

“Begging pardon ma’am,” Rey says roughly, pounding herself on the chest with a clenched fist. “But the women in my village used to whisper the same warnings to their children and with all respect, I do not believe any of it. I was in those woods for an entire moonrise by myself and saw nothing of what you speak.”

“Didn’t you?” Maz says, head tilting, a throaty cackle slipping through her withered lips. “I could imagine you saw much of what I mentioned on a moonlit walk through the trees.”

 _Except bears and wolves and shapeshifters,_ Rey tells herself. _No such thing as men who can change their shape after all. Were those men even real? Was it just a trick of the light? Did I just dream what I wanted to dream, because he had been beautiful?_

But Rey knows no light could change the color of a man’s eyes.

“Nay,” she murmurs. Her nipples are still hard little things beneath her dress, and an odd wetness, something she’s never felt before, dampens the apex of her thighs, a part of her body she’s never thought about, never really touched either outside of bathing and changing her monthly cloths. It is uncomfortable, and Rey can barely hold herself still. She wants to fidget, wants to know why her upper thighs are tense and covered in gooseflesh, why her stomach is roiling and her breasts feel heavy. Why?

“I…” the woman watches her expectantly, tea all but forgotten and cooling at her elbow. “I suppose I might have seen something strange, but perhaps it was loneliness that made me see it. The trees call to me, but walking alone can wear on the eyes.”

Maz shakes her head like a wild thing, chuckling. “You know, dearie, that what you saw was no wearing of the eyes. Now tell me all.”

Rey sighs. Perhaps this old creature isn’t so similar to the Christian women from her village, the ones who cross themselves when they stray too close to the forest. They believed so heartedly in the stories of the Fey and the other creatures of the darkened woods, the hinkypunks and tiny goblins, but they did not crave them as Maz does. Rey can see the deep-set hunger, the excitement etched into her face like words carved into stone.

“Men,” she says simply, as if that would be strange enough. Needing to fidget to ignore the throbbing, she picks at a scab just beginning to form over a cut on her right hand. A drop of blood, warm and glowing like a jewel, drips down her finger. “Garbed in leather, on horseback. It was only when the mist parted that my gaze fell upon their eyes.”

“And what of their eyes, child?”

“Not like any eyes I have ever seen,” Rey whispers, shoulders hunching with the force of the shivers tickling her spine. “Some had eyes as yellow as a cat’s, others as black as a raven’s. One man, his eyes were red as fire and just as glowing, and another…their leader, I suppose. His were so dark. I’ve never seen eyes that black before, like a bird’s wing or a pool of very dark water. Who has eyes like that? How is it possible?”

Maz's wrinkled lips spread into an uneven grin, and Rey turns her face away from the sight of her mossy, blackened teeth and their hint of needle sharpness, looking toward the glass bottles glinting merrily on the windowsill. “Anything is possible here, dear,” the old woman replies in that strange, rasping, pipe smoke voice. “But am I right in supposing you do not know the stories?”

“What stories?”

“The tales of the Dark Elves and their king, o’ course.”

“Nay,” Rey murmurs. She’s only heard tales of little creatures, feral and bloodthirsty, who eat children and carry off unmarried girls. 

“No, I have never heard such tales.” She turns back to the woman, meeting her quicksilver stare, taking in her mucky teeth and withered face. An old tree face, she thinks, one that’s seen and lived through countless stories.

“Tell me.”

**

The old woman crosses the packed wood floor to the fireplace, where a vast cauldron hangs from a hook over the low flame. The cauldron is so old, so covered with grime and rust that it appears a ruddy brown when it was once a shining coal black. Maz reaches up, and before Rey can stand or offer help, heaves the cauldron from its hook and lowers it to the floor. Peering over her shoulder, she says, “how does a lovely stew sound? You are staying the night I hope, tis a full moon.”

“Oh I," Rey stammers, wondering why she had not thought of asking the old woman for shelter. The little house despite its unfinished floors, has well-insulated walls and enough room for her to curl up in a corner under a blanket. “I would be honored,” the reply comes softly, and Rey bends her head with respect.

Grunting in satisfaction, Maz shuffles to the door and throws it open, disappearing with a creak and a slam of wood against metal. Wincing at the sudden noise, Rey rises unsteadily from the little chair and tests her balance, bouncing her injured foot gently on the floorboards. To her surprise, none of the keen, shooting pain she felt after her fall remains. She is able to walk, albeit clumsily with the heavy bandage wrapped about her ankle, to the fireplace, where she bends down and starts packing the hearth with kindling from a small pile beside the mantle. It is comforting, having a reason to move her hands and distract herself from her thoughts. She cannot stop picturing the man in the woods, his eyes as sharp and his cold touch along her hair, long, well-groomed fingers drifting down her cheek. Something catches fire low in her belly, flooding her insides with heat. Blushing, she tosses a final piece of dry wood into the hearth and turns, stumbling upright.

She has never looked upon a man and felt anything close to desire. It is an unsettling feeling.

Perhaps she will never see that man again, but if they were to somehow stumble across one another in the woods, she does not know whether she would run or stay to feel his hand upon her face again.

And that, above being lost in a vast landscape, of having no home or dear family, of seeing creatures from the darkest of tales, is the most frightening thing of all.

**

The door opens with a sharp creak and Maz enters, carrying a basket of vegetables in one hand, onions as fat and glistening as gems, mushrooms with skin white as goat’s milk. In the other is a small metal-rimmed bucket full of water, which rocks slightly with the force of her steps. She tosses the basket onto the table and it tips onto its side, radishes as wide as Rey’s fist rolling across the wood. The bucket she sets roughly on her chair, water slopping across the floor. The mess of dirt, the swish of water through the floorboards doesn’t seem to bother her, but this old woman seems to be part of the dirt herself, as comfortable in it and around it as she is in her own wrinkled skin.

“Do you mind a vegetable stew?” she asks, starting to separate the vegetables into little piles, catching them as they roll toward freedom at the edge of the table. “I do not seek sustenance in the flesh of a living creature if I can help it.”

Rey shakes her head, realizing as she gazes at the pile of radishes thick as her own wrist that her stomach feels empty and cold with hunger. She hasn’t eaten since the apple from her basket, when the sun was high and there was no threat of frightening things in the woods. It feels like an age has passed now, since then. “No ma’am,” she says. “I am ever so grateful for whatever you wish to give me.”

Another smile, another flash of those grimy teeth that turn Rey’s stomach like the sight of blood. Wincing, she turns back to the fireplace. After some fiddling and a bit of mental cursing, the kindling is set alight, filling the little house with a golden glow and a flood of shivering heat. Rey stands for a moment; hands outstretched to the flames, letting the heat caress the aches in her cold hands, the sting of still fresh cuts.

“So,” she says, as she shuffles back to the little chair, sighing as the heat falls over her back and licks at her knees. “You were about to tell me of the Dark Elves and their lord.”

“Ah yes,” Maz murmurs, now withdrawing a misshapen, rusted knife from the folds of her robes. The metal is dark as coal and twisted like oak roots, ending in a hilt of reddened pine carved and twined with circles and stars. She gathers the pile of mushrooms close to her and begins chopping them slowly into halves and small pieces, which she tosses into the cauldron she had moved to the tabletop.

“The Dark Elves…where to begin, child, where to begin. They have ruled this forest since before I came to this land and long before the little villages began springing up along its borders. The forest was a dark thing then, no path ran through it to guide humans in safety to the other side. People went missing. Children, young girls, musicians and artists, wood-cutters and craftsmen, women as bright and beautiful as a summer day, humans who could be of use to them. They like fancy things, you see.”

The mushrooms are gone now, replaced by fat potatoes the size of Rey’s hand. As she listens to the woman’s voice, she thinks of the legends the villagers whispered about, the grinning creatures who snatch babes from the path. Had they gone to the Elf King?

“In other lands, the Elfin folk are made up of both ladies and men, and you can find them riding together in their troops, or dancing upon the green in circles of toadstools. In our land, there are no elfin ladies. The elves of our forest are men, and have the desires of their mortal counterparts amplified. Their King is the worst among them. It is said he steals away a maiden each year, intent on having a bride, but they are unaccustomed to his world and his pleasures and die of the cold, or from the taste of his food or the strength of his body, poor things, he has desires no mortal can imagine. He has no queen now, the King of the Dark Ones. He has been lonely for some years. Often, I hear his troop passing my doors, barely making a noise ‘cept for the howling of a frigid wind. Don’t think he’d have much luck these days; girls aren’t silly enough to go wandering off with no cause.”

Shrewd eyes meet shy, and Rey’s face begins to redden. Her chin jerks up in defiance, the back of her neck burning. The little cottage is achingly hot from the flickering light of the fire, but she swears she can still feel the creature’s touch on her skin, as if it is buried inside her now, engraved across her bones like a name across a headstone.

“I’ve never been afraid of the forest,” she says, her fingers winding about each other in her lap. “And I’m not afraid of this Elf King. There is nothing frightening in the trees, and I cannot go back to where I came from. I told myself when I lost the way home that I would go forward until I found where I should be, and I am not giving up because predators lurk in this forest. It is big enough for both of us, I should say. I belong here as surely as they do, if they truly exist. It is the way of things, isn’t it? Predators and prey.”

But Rey knows they do. She knows now it was the Dark Elves she saw on the path just hours before, with their lantern eyes and horses as tall as two saplings. But it is difficult to admit that if she were forced to leave this lovely little house, with its crackling fire and happy company, she would be afraid of what lay beyond its doors. She was never afraid of the world before, merely of not exploring it.

Maz's head bows, her lips sliding into that uneasily clever smile. She tosses the halves of potato glittering and slick with wet into the cauldron and moves on to kale, ripping at the leaves with her hands like teeth tearing into flesh. 

“Nonsense,” she says, stripping the leaves from their stalks and setting them, naked, into the cauldron. “You’ve had the dreams, heard the calling. Don’t say you haven’t. This talk of not being frightened, of losing your path, of finding where you belong – don’t you see child?”

Rey hugs her waist, arms crossed over her chest as shivers run down her back like rainfall. She thinks of the song of the moon through the window, the easy familiarity of the pines, fingers of light caressing coal dark curls, and she struggles not to remember. “See what?” she says, and her voice comes out harsh and rickety as old wood.

The old woman’s fist, thin and pale as the petals of a moonflower, slams down onto the table, shaking the vegetables and making an almighty crash. Rey jumps, her knee hits the underside of the table and she bites her lip to hold back a cry of pain.

“Don’t play daft girl!” A pointed finger is directed straight at her nose. “The bride, you know it’s you. You saw him when you were dreaming, did you not? I have been in these woods long enough to see plenty of maidens, pale sickly girls they were, arms like swan feathers. They never even reached him, never saw his eyes or were touched by his hands. Not you. You could survive his embrace, human though you are. It must be you.”

“No,” Rey whispers, slowly beginning to stand from her chair. The old woman is mad, completely mad. There is no Elf King’s bride, there can’t be. The dream…it was the heady scent of lavender and an overactive mind, nothing more. Her heart begins to trip against her ribs, her bones aching. “With all due respect ma’am,” she says, stepping so the full of the chair is between them and the rushing warmth of the fire is at her back. “You’re mad. Absolutely mad. I am no Elf King’s bride; I did not enter the forest because of some summons. I came of my own heart, my own volition. I wanted an escape. My village – there is no place for me there.”

Maz is cutting radishes now, eyes on her work, ears seemingly deaf to Rey’s speech. “There is a reason you are not welcome there.”

“What do you mean?”

Maz shrugs, pulling two onions close and peeling away their thin purple skins. “They smell it on you, the way a pack of dogs smells fear.”

Rey’s voice is barely a whisper. “Smell what?”

“That you’re meant for something more.”

Rey moves back around the chair and sits down with a huff and a snort, her skirts tangling under her thighs. She glares balefully at Maz as the old woman chops the onions into quarters, wiping the stinking juice on her apron after she tosses them in with the rest. “A bunch of tosh, I think, but alright, I’ll play. So you are saying the men…creatures I saw on the path were elves. But were they just a hunting party, or was one of them the…king?” The word feels like soot on her tongue and her skin is so alive with shivering and shaking that she feels as though her bones will leap right out.

The old woman, finished now with her chopping, moves to the windowsill and the jars of crushed herbs. She does not answer for a long moment as she bends and inspects them, choosing four that she holds tight against her chest as she moves back to the cauldron. She sets them down on the edge of the tabletop, again lining their corked tops by size and shape. She runs down the line, fingers moving quick as spindles, tapping herbs over the layers of vegetables, filling the room with a spicy, dizzying scent.

“You spoke of eyes like shadow,” she says, turning at last to Rey. “What else did you notice?”

“He had coal black hair hair, his armor was brocaded leather with a design of ivy etched into the breastplate and down the gauntlets. He wore long leather gloves beneath them, and his steed was pale as ice.

“He was cold,” Rey wrings the edge of her cloak between her hands, remembering that haughty glare, his touch like cold fire. “Cruel looking, stern, but they all were.” Something akin to excitement blooms in her belly, making her cheeks and neck redden.

“Of course they are,” Maz moves to the bucket of water and tips it over the edge of the cauldron. “They live in their world of trees and shadows, surrounded by their own kind, no women in sight. No kindness is taught to them, no compassion or love. They are immortal and do not feel as humans do. The Elf King is the worst among them, a hunter by nature. There is no mercy in him.”

“But why does he search so diligently for a queen?” Rey asks. She understands somehow the craving for company, the longing for understanding as sharp as a wound. “What is her purpose if there are no women?”

“Therein lies your answer, dearie,” Maz replies. She sets the rusted knife down on the table edge and removes a long, roughly carved wooden spoon from her robes. Dipping it into the cauldron, she rises on her tiptoes and begins to slowly stir its contents. “What is life without femininity, without death and rebirth? The presence of a human woman carries on his reign, brings him companionship. He is lonely, child.”

Maz’s glance is full of an approval that Rey feels right down to her gut. “You know what that is, loneliness.”

Maz stirs once more and sets the spoon aside. As Rey looks up, their eyes meet, and Maz's expression is the kindest she has ever seen.

“For a reason, perhaps,” she murmurs, and smiles again, her teeth brown in the firelight. “For a reason.”

Rey does not reply, though she too is thinking of their similarities, the empty routine of her life before this, the constant itch of _loneliness_. 

“How do you know them so well?” She asks quickly, the words sticking to the back of her throat.

The old woman does not answer. She wraps her arms around the cauldron, hugging it to her chest, struggling to lift it. Rey jumps up, cutting around the table and stopping the old woman with a hand on her shoulder, frail and thin as a bird’s wing. Stepping around her, she gently pushes her hands away and heaves the cauldron into her arms, struggling toward the fireplace. After it is placed on its heavy hook over the fire, Rey collapses in the little chair, clutching her breast.

Maz watches her with her shrewd eyes as she wipes the water from the seat of her chair with the edge of her robe and sits down, reaching for her cold tea. “I know them so well because I have lived here a long while, child,” she says. “Longer than you have been alive. I know all the creatures in this part of the forest because it is my home.”

“But why did you come out here?” Rey says, reaching for her own tea. It is frigid as it passes her lips, but even sweeter than before. “Why live in the forest?”

“The peace,” the old woman replies simply, head tilting toward the depths of her cup. She swirls the cup between her palms, making the soft wood skid across the tabletop. “The quiet, the song of the wind through the leaves, the rabbits and deer and the birds, the flowers in springtime, the fish in the streams and the glimpses of the Dark Ones through the trees at night, when the air is wild. You are drawn to it too, child. You feel the call.”

“Of course,” Rey says unthinkingly, nails biting into the back of her hand, drawing droplets of blood warm as fire. “Of course I do.” She downs the rest of her tea and gazes at her hands, at the blood trickling like a ribbon down her wrist, not moving to wipe it away. The forest is home, she knows, or at least the illusion of home.

Lost in thought, she does not notice that the old woman is looking at her again, smiling.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: zoophilia. kylo has a few different forms. we meet one here!
> 
> many many many thanks to my beta readers/friends:   
> [QueenofCarrotFlowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfCarrotFlowers/pseuds/QueenOfCarrotFlowers), [Sadie](https://twitter.com/reylohirrim), [Fly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flypaper_brain/) and everyone both on twitter and AO3 who encouraged me to post this and continue writing reylo. i love this community, and i love you all ;___;

_ I was like other girls _

_ trapped and lonely _

_ and painting pictures in the stars.  _

_ I was slick _

_ with old birth or early longing,  _

_ already halfway between _

_ who I wanted to be and who I was. _

Nicole Callihan _ , Fable _

Maz makes a bed for her in the corner under the window, between the fireplace and the shelves full of crockery and glass. It reminds Rey of her bed in Old Fran’s house: a pallet of prickly straw covered in tattered blankets, but Maz is more considerate than her previous guardian ever was.

In the span of a scattering of hours, as Rey stirs their stew over the fire, Maz stuffs a length of cloth with dried leaves collected from the surrounding forest, raw wool, and old rags, creating an echo of what Rey’s used to sleeping on. Except...it’s almost luxurious, sitting on soft wool and crinkling leaves, instead of straw that scratches her rump and makes her skin itch. 

It’s odd to say the least, having someone actually  _ care _ about her comfort. She’d developed minor frostbite on her calves and feet before Old Fran thought to make her a pallet bed. That was after six years of living with her, yet Maz, an old woman she hardly knows, didn’t even ask if she needed a place to stay. She just knew. And she cared enough not to let her sleep on the floor, or outside with the animals. If she has any. 

Rey’s eyes fill with stubborn tears. She waits until Maz has her back turned, checking on the stew and humming with satisfaction as she inhales the spicy contents of the pot (she’d added jars of things that smelled so delectable, Rey’s mouth watered and her empty stomach gurgled with anticipation), before she wipes them hastily on her sleeve.

The packed dirt floor is warm near the fireplace, and Rey drags the makeshift mattress there, insisting Maz rest her feet after she finishes sewing and stirring. She tucks it into the corner, patting down the blankets Maz hands her, the pillow she takes from her own bed. When she’s done, the tears are back, threatening to blind her.

“Thank you,” Rey says to Maz’s back, as the old woman sits by the fire, unable to put her gratitude into any other words. “I’ve never had a bed like this.”

“Oh child,” the old woman says, huffing through her nose. She turns on her little stool and eyes Rey with absolutely no pity in her gaze, just something like companionship. “You can have that bed for however long you’d like. I have been alone a long time and need the company.”

Her eyes crinkle at the corners as she smiles at Rey, soft and sure. “You’ll do that for an old woman won’t you? Stay and keep her company?”

_ Of course, _ Rey thinks,  _ no one’s needed my company before. _

When she curls up that night, nestled under downy blankets, warm to the bone even as the fire dies down low, it is an easy thing, to slip under.

**

This time  _ she _ walks beneath a crescent moon. The strips of inky sky she can glimpse between branches are filled with glittering stars. The night is cold. A whistling wind sets twigs rattling like knucklebones in a cup and Rey feels the barest beginnings of snow in the air, can scent it sharp and wet, but her arms are bare.

Her legs are bare too, underneath a thin pale shift that whips about her knees. A shift she’s never worn before, because this one is actually clean. Her own is so stained after years of use and darning that it is more beige than white.

Her feet are crusted with mud and bits of muck and her hair is undone, loose and brushing her shoulders in wild, tangled waves. Damp leaves are pasted to her calves, which are otherwise bare. No cloak shields her from the elements, no boots or thick stockings. Rey squishes her toes in the dirt, feeling nothing but warmth between them. 

Odd. 

The night is  _ cold _ . So cold that if she were awake, her skin would pebble, her bones would ache and teeth would chatter. It’s a night that necessitates a fire, a night where children and the elderly could freeze if they’re not careful. Where Rey herself would freeze, if this forest were real. 

But here, in the strange space between sleeping and wakefulness, she feels nothing, not even the pinprick of gooseflesh along her arms or the brush of a breeze like fingers combing through her hair. All there is in the entire world is the call of the night creatures, the whisper of moon overhead, and the swish of her shift about her knees. 

So she walks. She walks for a long time, kicking up great swathes of mud and crumpled, sweet-smelling lichen until her calves and knees are caked with grime and the hem of her nightgown is filthy with it. She listens to the call of owls across the blanket of trees overhead, and peers through the stretching fingers of their branches. 

The sky’s vastness is curtained by twigs and branches, but what she can see is a veritable meadow of stars. The beauty of it all is a lead weight in her chest, and she feels that call again, even in her dreaming state. The call of  _ belonging. _

Every so often she hears the coo of a fox, the shriek of a bat, the cries of night insects, and in the dappled light of the crescent moon, she catches glimpses of tails and paws in the gloom.

It is as if the entirety of the forest is singing for her. Calling out to her in words only it can speak.

_ You belong here _ , the cry of the evening creatures says.  _ Stay with us,  _ the whipping branches cry. 

_ For awhile. _

_ (Forever) _

And, as the moon slides behind the heavy blanket of a cloud leaving heavy shadows in its wake, she hears a shifting rustle in a stand of bushes off to her right. Heart bleating, she whirls, her nightgown slapping her thighs, hair smacking her cheeks, and finds herself face to face with a deer.

A stag.

The largest stag she’s ever seen, and venison always was a staple of her limited diet. He stands upright on thin legs laced with muscle nearly as tall as her waist. His antlers stretch toward the sky, multi-tiered and towering, strings of ivy clinging to the tines like ornaments. And as they stand parallel to each other across the clearing, only paces of dirt and decayed leaves between them, the stag is so tall, so  _ impossibly large _ , that they are exactly face to face.

His coat of thick pale hair gleams lantern bright in the darkness, giving off an eerie pearlescence that has Rey’s mouth opening, dropping in surprise. It...he, undoubtedly, is  _ glowing _ . Like the  _ will-o-the-wisps _ Old Fran used to weave stories of in the firelight, so long ago. Shuffling his hoofed feet through the thicket, the stag bends to crush leaves between hungry jaws, watching her with luminous eyes that shimmer like obsidian in the absence of the moonlight, as if  _ she  _ will pounce. 

There is something familiar about those eyes, the inky sheen.

Is she the wolf here, she wonders?

There’s something strange in that gaze. It fills her belly with an almost...wanton heat. Like eating too much on a winter’s night, knowing you’ll have less the next day.

Leaves scrabble on the branches overhead and the moon sails forth again, casting a gentle, blotchy stream of light across the mossy forest floor. And Rey sees that the stag’s coat isn’t pure white, but speckled with mahogany and umber. 

Time slows. An hour could be passing, a handful of days, as Rey’s fists clench around her shift and the stag chews delicately at his mouthful of leaves, still watching her almost lazily. Her heart pounds a hypnotizing staccato beneath her breast, her wrists pulsing with it. She feels light headed, even in this dream world, as if her ears had been stuffed with cotton.

She cannot move, and she certainly cannot stop gazing at him. The pull of his haunches, the rustle of his luxurious coat, the hypnotizing motions of his mouth as he chews, the sway of the ivy in the wind, tangling in his antlers. She longs to touch those antlers, feel the smooth bone beneath her fingertips, plunge her hands into the thick hair along his neck, tug his muzzle close to hers. Kiss his velvet nose.

Kiss?

The stag, his gaze still clutching hers, takes a tentative step forward on his powerful legs. 

Another.

Then another.

Rey is truly frozen. She can barely hear the whistling of wind-swept trees anymore, let alone the scuff of his hooves across the forest floor. The world has an eerie, underwater feeling, and the stag is the sun she saw so long ago, lying under a rippling summer blanket of cool water. Her surroundings slow down as they had then, until all she can see is him, his coat reflecting the crescent moon, the haze of starlight. He keeps his great head bowed low, as if in supplication, as he eats up the space between them. 

She clenches one hand tighter around its fistful of shift, trembling, an unfamiliar heat beginning to pool in her gut, and then lets it go, her palm flattening and rising straight out from her chest. Her fingers flutter, both in wind and in nerves, but she holds them out as the stag nears her, stopping just out of reach, just far enough away that  _ she _ will be the one who has to close the distance between them.

He must have been standing on uneven ground across the clearing, because up close he is  _ monstrous _ . Monstrously huge. Bigger, wider, than any deer she’d seen in her village or any she’d encountered in her forest wanderings. His legs are as long as she is tall, knitted through with muscle, his hooves as big around as the bottom of Maz’s soup pot, the one Rey washed and dried and put away before she fell asleep tonight. His antlers block out the canopy and its background of stars overhead, their tines as thick as her hands. 

The heat whispering through her belly, twining its way through her insides coils anew in a place she’s never quite explored. Even bathing, she’s rarely nude.  _ Good girls _ , she was told,  _ keep covered there. _

She’s seen herself when her shift is wet, seen the outline of dark curls at the zenith between her too-thin thighs. She’s felt the blood come, only occasionally during the winter when food is so scarce, accompanied with pain in the spring and summer that has her in bed for hours, crying for relief. Once or twice, she’s dipped her fingers there, to examine the place good people are not supposed to touch.

Now, that place tingles, feels warm and cold all at once, empty somehow. Rey feels a trickle of fluid run down her thigh and wonders (is it possible to wonder in dreams?) if she will get her blood, just for something stranger to happen. 

But no...this fluid doesn’t feel the same. It’s thin, watery, and she feels...tight and hot and too much, all at once. As if she is too confined in her own skin, a hollow vessel in need of filling. Her shift is as rough as hay against her skin. 

A moment passes, another, as Rey stares into the stag’s eyes. His gaze is unrepentant, as if there is nothing else in this forest he wants to look at. 

Beneath the thin material, her nipples pebble, gooseflesh shocking the skin along her ribs. Her breasts are heavy, aching things, and Rey can’t hold it back anymore, can’t keep herself quiet.

A throaty, gasping moan falls from her lips, and she has the inescapable urge to rip her shift off and go running into the night. She knows, just as she knows where to find berries when the frosts come or when to slip from her house into the forest for a walk, not actual knowledge but something more primal and innate, something like the tug of her heart, that he would follow. 

She feels at once, in this strange frozen moment, like prey and predator combined.

This close, his eyes draw her in the way the forest had under the full moon: as if there is a string tied tight around her wrist and an unseen force is tugging on it, yanking her forward. That step between them seems like a precipice, but Rey has never had a dream like this, never felt this weight in her belly, her breasts, and she wants to feel  _ more _ . 

So she takes the step.

**

The stag’s tongue is a smooth and undulus thing as he licks gently at Rey’s outstretched hand. It is thicker across than Rey’s palm and longer, its tip touching her wrist. His nose, heart shaped and damp, nudges until her trembling fingers part, and he begins to stroke between them.

Something tells Rey he isn’t searching for food. 

His sloe-dark gaze is still on hers, their eyes meeting when her lids flutter open again. Her gasp is harsh in the cloth-thick silence. 

When he finally pulls away, her body is vibrating, hot and tight and  _ alive _ . 

Rey, feeling at once more awake than ever before and slightly outside her own body, lifts the hem of her shift up and over her head in one fluid motion, dropping it over her shoulder where it lands in the dirt without a sound. 

She is completely naked now, nipples pebbled, stomach and buttocks covered in gooseflesh despite the lack of any wind. It’s the stag’s stare, she knows, as she meets his gaze once more beneath the moon. It’s like a touch. She can feel it caressing the skin between her breasts, running from her sternum to her belly, all the way to the triangle of honey colored hair that covers her sex. 

It’s wetter there now, she can feel it trickling down the backs of her thighs, and she longs for something she cannot name. Does she want her own fingers there, stroking the curls, separating them? Or does she want that lovely, smooth tongue to do the work for her?

The stag answers her unspoken question, taking another step until his great head can bend forward and nudge her belly. His tall antlers block her view, but up close she can see the tangles of flowering ivy wound about the tines, as if someone had decorated them. The flowers are crimson and white, tiny blooms braided through pale leaves. A scent drifts from them, light and sweet like the beginnings of springtime, just when the snows are melting and the world wakes up again. She takes a deep lungful of the pungent perfume, her breasts lifting with the effort, and the stag’s cheek touches her nipple, brushes the underside of her breast.

Rey gasps, liquid warmth filling her insides, peaking her nipples until they nearly pinch with a beautiful pain. Even the hair brushing the back of her neck burns, her body heavy and hot and  _ aching. _

Feeling braver now, she adjusts her feet so her legs are spread just a bit, leaving a gap between her thighs as the stag’s damp nose nudges her below her navel. In encouragement, Rey runs cautious fingers over the arch of one antler tine, a branch of bone the color of amber, of autumn, and she can almost swear the stag shivers in reply.

_ Touch me _ , she wants to say.  _ I know who you are, I know who lives beneath your skin. I’ve seen your eyes. _

She doesn’t care what form he takes, she wants to feel him. The wanting of him, that tongue, that gaze, the warmth and knowledge that she’s seen him before, she  _ knows _ him, is like standing too close to a cooking fire. 

Rey wonders just how close she is to getting burned.

The stag’s massive sides heave as he adjusts his own stance, rubbing his cold nose from side to side beneath her navel, as if he’s scenting her. Rey wraps her fingers around the antler she’s holding, gently stroking it in her fist.

In response, the great stag licks the skin just above her curls, and a searing burst of pleasure ripples down her thighs. His tongue feels like a massive thing now, and one stroke nearly separates the lips of her cunt, nearly reaches the source of all of her aching, her need. 

Grasping his antlers for support with both hands now, Rey spreads her legs further, arching her back in invitation.  _ Please _ . _ Please please please _ .

The stag’s head, nearly as tall and long as her own torso, bends further, and suddenly that cool tongue is running over her curls, lapping at the seam of her quim, filling her with such liquid pleasure that her head rolls back on her neck of its own accord, her lips parting in a moan. 

The silence was once thick and companionable between them, but her low, heated whisper of “yes,” breaks it.

That beautiful tongue quests further, lapping at her trembling parted thighs, the sensitive skin where her leg meets the sharp jut of her pelvis. And then, in quick little swipes, begins working her cunt again in flat strokes that nearly send her keening to the ground. She’s grasping his antlers tight enough to leave an imprint on her palms now, leaning into his mouth, his nose, the hair along his jaw that tickles her abdomen. 

He’s tasting her, she thinks, cleaning up the liquid that had trickled from her sex. It feels so wonderful, smoothing the ache at her core, but not quite dulling it. 

With every swipe of his tongue, more of her juices trickle from her entrance, coating his nose and the curve of his mouth. He nudges her, pushes gently until she’s up on her tiptoes and her cunt is pressed to the ridge between his nose and eyes. The pressure, suddenly sharp and  _ just right _ , is delicious, heavenly even, and Rey slowly begins to move her hips back and forth. She rolls her hips, pulling herself up with his antlers, until her slick entrance presses against his lips. 

His answering lick nearly has her screaming. The tip of his tongue caresses her slit, swiping up until it hits something so fantastic that she immediately answers with a thrust of her pelvis.  _ More more more more _ , her body chants, and she nearly climbs the stag’s jaw in her eagerness to spread her legs, revealing the whole of her quivering pussy to that  _ tongue. _

The stag nudges her with his nose, pressing against just the right spot, and nudges again until she’s fully pulling herself up, wrapping her bare legs about his great neck, thicker around than both of her legs combined. He walks with her that way, clinging to him and panting, until her back hits something rough and icy cold. 

Gasping at the jolt of contact, Rey looks up and a canopy of beech branches greets her, above which the shivering crescent of the moon grins, as if witnessing their lewd act and approving wholeheartedly. 

Her strange partner nudges again, nosing that place between her lower lips, and Rey takes a breath, holds it as she leans fully against the tree. Her exposed back flutters with gooseflesh, and that touch, that anchor between wood and skin makes the nuzzle of the stag’s mouth even more wanton. 

The combination of the tree at her back, the heavy form of a beast between her legs, is a wild thing. She feels more connected to the forest than she did while wandering through it, touching its trees, trailing her feet through the layers of dirt and grime and dead things that make up the bed its undergrowth rises from.

Their connection  _ is _ wild thing, something so craven yet beautiful that it fills her abdomen with the heat of pure want. The stag’s lips near her cunt again, tickling curls. She smoothes her hands over his antlers, down the tines to the soft hair between them, canting her hips to her lover’s mouth in welcome.

_ Please, _ she thinks, as her new position against the tree moves her away from the stag’s beautiful tongue. She can no longer feel the heavy weight of his nose against her. When she thrusts, her swollen, throbbing quim meets air, and it’s almost painful.

“Please,” her whisper is ragged in the silence, silence not even broken by the moaning of the winter wind through the trees. It is as if the forest has paused for them, ceased its nightly symphony. The stag moves back just enough to meet her eyes and she wonders, briefly, how she is being held up, before his nose and lips disappear once more beneath the curls of her sex. 

“Please,” she murmurs again, and she is answered with the rolling wet weight of his tongue, right against the most sensitive, throbbing spot. Her gasping moan seems to spur him on, and he is lapping at her again, smoothing his tongue from her soaked slit to the crease between her lower lips over and over, the pressure so delightful that Rey cannot stop herself from grasping his antlers again, pulling him closer, whispering little words of encouragement like  _ so good _ and  _ more _ and  _ oh gods _ . 

Something is building inside of her, tickling her lower abdomen, making her pussy feel heavy and swollen. Her breasts long for fingers to stoke them, hands to clasp them, but she cannot break contact with him long enough to touch them. 

The stag’s nose grazes her lips, and suddenly his tongue, impossibly thick, is nudging her entrance. Rey  _ keens _ , arching closer to the contact as he pushes pushes pushes that beautiful tongue up inside her pussy. It’s so thick that it fills her impossibly well, to the point of stars exploding at the corners of her vision. He  _ licks _ inside her, his nose brushing that delicious spot with each movement, and then he slowly starts to withdraw, the tip of his tongue curled to hit every spot inside of her just right.

Rey’s clenching his antlers now, her thighs wrapped so tightly around his neck she  _ almost _ fears choking him. Would fear it if she could focus on anything outside of the pleasure, the little fiery surges of wonder filling her belly, her quim, her thighs. That something from before is  _ more _ now, like an itch finally being scratched, and it sends tickles down her calves, arches her feet, curls her toes. 

The stag begins to  _ thrust _ his tongue into her dripping, aching hot pussy, and the force of it pushes her back against the bark, her skin barely feeling the scratches as she arches forward and is shoved back, over and over. His nose hits her more firmly now, and his tongue is a wet, smooth, wondrous thing, filling that trembling nothingness, that void inside of her that longed for contact. It slides in and out of her, each forward motion pushing against a spot up inside her cunt that makes noises she’s never heard before pour from her mouth.

Her eyes are barely open now, languorously half-closed, her nails cutting into the skin of her palms as she thrusts her hips to meet his tongue. That something, that fire building inside of her is coming to a head, and she wonders if she’ll burst into flame when she finally meets it.

One more delicious lick inside of her pussy, one more thrust of his damp nose against that perfect spot, and Rey breaks apart with a scream, her quivering thighs jerking about the stag’s face, her head falling back against the bark behind her. Her eyes shut as she shivers and shakes with the force of the feelings, the pleasure that tightens her nipples but relaxes the muscles of her thighs. More liquid gushes from her, and the stag is quick to lick it up, making her gasp and squeak and sigh.

Her body is a cloud now, and she is falling. Her back hits damp earth, a heavy weight follows her down, and she is so tired as something rests against her thighs, pressing tiny kisses to her hips. 

Her eyes flutter open, and she sees who lifted her down from the tree, who’s resting by her legs, wrapped around her lower body.

It’s  _ him _ , his velvet-soft hair brushing her stomach, his cool-rough hands stroking her, calming her as she shakes from aftershocks. 

The stag is gone.

Before she floats away, her body heavy as an anvil and light all at once, she meets the man’s sleepy, satisfied gaze.

And sees that he has the exact same obsidian eyes.


End file.
